Winboard and mini shogi

[Ferdy]

I ran a match with the following command line.

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/mg=16 /lgf=msca-8start.pgn /sgf=mini_tr1_blitz.pgn /tc=3 /inc=2 /mps=0 /lgi=-2

Lima has entry in winboard like the ff.

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"Lima 2-00 64bit" -fcp Lima-64pop.exe -fd "C:\mini-shogi-update\miniShogi\Lima" /boardWidth=5 /boardHeight=5 /holdingsSize=5 -variant shogi -fn "Lima 2-00 64bit" -firstOptions "UseBook=0,Ponder=0"

After every game is finished I get the ff. but the match continued.



Lima has variant features:

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feature variants="shogi,mini,5x5+5_shogi"

I am using Winboard 4.8.0 from the mini shogi package.

Why would that box pops up?

[Ferdy]

This seems to have been fixed when I use

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Variant shogi

instead of

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Variant mini

in the start pgn.

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[Event "?"]
[Site "?"]
[Date "?"]
[Round "-"]
[White "?"]
[Black "?"]
[Result "*"]
[Variant "shogi"]
[FEN "rbsgk/4p/5/P4/KGSBR[-] w 0 1"]
[SetUp "1"]

{--------------
r b s g k
. . . . p
. . . . .
P . . . .
K G S B R
white to play
--------------}
1. Bb3
*

[hgm]

Ah, OK. I was already puzzled by the whole thing.

It seems there still is a conflict between the use of engine-defined variants, and starting from game or position files. I have not completely figured this out yet, but it seems to have to do with the relative timing of the engine's setup command and the loading of the game or position. Until I solve that, engine-define variants can only be used with game and position files by selecting them through the old mechanism of a board-size-override prefix to the parent variant's name. I guess that is what the PGN does here: the Variant tag switches WinBoard to shogi, and the FEN tag to 5x5+5 board. (Well, not sure about the +5 for the holdings. Perhaps it will require a -holdingsSize option to make demotion work correctly.)

This reminds me of an issue someone pointed out to me last week:

In the mini-Shogi package I host I also include a Lima binary. But selecting it does not work correctly: when a Gold gets captured, it appears in the GUI holdings as a Pawn. Which later then of course leads to an erroneous illegal-move forfeit when the engine wants to drop the Gold. Other engines don't have this problem, so it is not an intrisic WinBoard bug. I suspect that WinBoard somehow gets confused by Lima sending it a setup command with a wrong pieceToCharTable in it (e.g. still containing the Knight, pushing the Gold out of the available holdings).

Now Lima did not have this problem in the UEC Cup, so I guess the package I host contains an obsolete Lima version. But I think I included the latest publicly released one at the time. Has this been cured in the version that is currently on your website?

[Ferdy]

Ah, OK. I was already puzzled by the whole thing.

It seems there still is a conflict between the use of engine-defined variants, and starting from game or position files. I have not completely figured this out yet, but it seems to have to do with the relative timing of the engine's setup command and the loading of the game or position. Until I solve that, engine-define variants can only be used with game and position files by selecting them through the old mechanism of a board-size-override prefix to the parent variant's name. I guess that is what the PGN does here: the Variant tag switches WinBoard to shogi, and the FEN tag to 5x5+5 board. (Well, not sure about the +5 for the holdings. Perhaps it will require a -holdingsSize option to make demotion work correctly.)

This reminds me of an issue someone pointed out to me last week:

In the mini-Shogi package I host I also include a Lima binary. But selecting it does not work correctly: when a Gold gets captured, it appears in the GUI holdings as a Pawn. Which later then of course leads to an erroneous illegal-move forfeit when the engine wants to drop the Gold. Other engines don't have this problem, so it is not an intrisic WinBoard bug. I suspect that WinBoard somehow gets confused by Lima sending it a setup command with a wrong pieceToCharTable in it (e.g. still containing the Knight, pushing the Gold out of the available holdings).

Now Lima did not have this problem in the UEC Cup, so I guess the package I host contains an obsolete Lima version. But I think I included the latest publicly released one at the time. Has this been cured in the version that is currently on your website?

I can't understand the mini-shogi package, after installation and opening the winboard I get this.



So I just create my own command lines in the winboard.ini.

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"Lima 2-00 64bit" -fcp Lima-64pop.exe -fd "C:\mini-shogi-update\miniShogi\Lima" /boardWidth=5 /boardHeight=5 /holdingsSize=5 /loadPositionFile="mini.fen" -variant shogi -fn "Lima 2-00 64bit" -firstOptions "UseBook=0,Ponder=0"
"Sjaak II 1.4.1 64bit" -fcp "SjaakII_win64_MS.exe" -fd "C:\myfiles\chess\engines\nobook\Crazyhouse\SjaakII\sjaakii-1.4.1-win" /boardWidth=5 /boardHeight=5 /holdingsSize=5 /loadPositionFile="mini.fen" -variant shogi -fn "Sjaak II 1.4.1 64bit"
"Shokidoki UEC9+ 32bit" -fcp "sdk.exe" -fd "C:\mini-shogi-update\miniShogi\Shokidoki" /boardWidth=5 /boardHeight=5 /holdingsSize=5 /loadPositionFile="mini.fen" -variant shogi -fn "Shokidoki UEC9+ 32bit"
"TJshogi 0.19 64bit" -fcp "TJshogi5x5.exe" -fd "C:\mini-shogi-update\miniShogi\TJ" /boardWidth=5 /boardHeight=5 /holdingsSize=5 -variant shogi /loadPositionFile="mini.fen" -fn "TJshogi 0.19 64bit"
"NebiyuAlien 1.45 32bit" -fcp "NebiyuAlien.exe" -fd "C:\mini-shogi-update\miniShogi\Nebiyu" -variant shogi /loadPositionFile="mini.fen" -fn "NebiyuAlien 1.45 32bit"
"GNU miniShogi 1.4.0p0" -fcp "gnuminishogi.exe" -fd "C:\mini-shogi-update\miniShogi\GNU" /boardWidth=5 /boardHeight=5 /holdingsSize=5 -variant shogi /loadPositionFile="mini.fen" -fn "GNU miniShogi 1.4.0p0"

After running a tour I get this.

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[Event "UEC Cup 9"]
[Site "JUPITER"]
[Date "2016.12.05"]
[Round "34"]
[White "Lima 2-00 64bit"]
[Black "Shokidoki UEC9+ 32bit"]
[Result "1-0"]
[TimeControl "60+1"]
[Variant "shogi"]
[FEN "rbsgk/4p/5/P4/KGSBR[-] w 0 1"]
[SetUp "1"]

{--------------
r b s g k
. . . . p
. . . . .
P . . . .
K G S B R
white to play
--------------}
1. Bc2 Bc4 {+0.04/14 2.2} 2. Sd2 {+0.12/14 4} Sd4 {+0.16/14 2.2} 3. Gb2
{+0.12/14 4} Rb5 {-0.88/15 2.9} 4. Gc3 {+0.45/13 4} Sxc3 {-0.32/16 2.8} 5.
Sxc3 {+0.77/12 2.0}
{Xboard: Forfeit due to invalid move: G@d3 (_1_1 via ^0) res=25} 1-0

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[Event "UEC Cup 9"]
[Site "JUPITER"]
[Date "2016.12.05"]
[Round "59"]
[White "NebiyuAlien 1.45 32bit"]
[Black "GNU miniShogi 1.4.0p0"]
[Result "0-1"]
[TimeControl "60+1"]
[Variant "shogi"]
[FEN "rbsgk/4p/5/P4/KGSBR[-] w 0 1"]
[SetUp "1"]

{--------------
r b s g k
. . . . p
. . . . .
P . . . .
K G S B R
white to play
--------------}
1. Sb2 Sd4 2. Bc2 {+0.00/18 2.7} e3 {-17.55/8 1.5} 3. Sb3 {+1.78/20 4} e2
{-2.23/8 2.5} 4. Rd1 {+4.34/20 2.2} Sc3 {+0.71/8 1.9} 5. Gb2 {+5.72/19 2.1}
Sxc2 {+0.29/6 0.8} 6. Gxc2 {+6.10/19 2.6} B@d4 {-0.39/6 1.0}
{Xboard: Forfeit due to invalid move: S@c3 (_1_1 via ^0) res=25} 0-1

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[Event "UEC Cup 9"]
[Site "JUPITER"]
[Date "2016.12.05"]
[Round "60"]
[White "Lima 2-00 64bit"]
[Black "TJshogi 0.19 64bit"]
[Result "0-1"]
[TimeControl "60+1"]
[Variant "shogi"]
[FEN "rbsgk/4p/5/P4/KGSBR[-] w 0 1"]
[SetUp "1"]

{--------------
r b s g k
. . . . p
. . . . .
P . . . .
K G S B R
white to play
--------------}
1. Sb2 Sd4 2. Bb3 {+0.13/14 4} Bc4 {+0.00/13 1.1} 3. Gc2 {+0.26/13 4} Rc5
{+0.00/13 4} 4. Bxc4 {+0.24/12 4} Gxc4 {+0.00/14 2.6} 5. Rc1 {+0.06/12 4}
B@b4 {-0.10/13 12} 6. B@e2 {+1.15/12 4} Ba5 {-0.80/13 3} 7. Bxc4
{+2.82/14 2.8} Rxc4 {-1.50/12 0.8}
{Xboard: Forfeit due to invalid move: G@d3 (_1_1 via ^0) res=25} 0-1

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[Event "UEC Cup 9"]
[Site "JUPITER"]
[Date "2016.12.05"]
[Round "33"]
[White "GNU miniShogi 1.4.0p0"]
[Black "Sjaak II 1.4.1 64bit"]
[Result "1-0"]
[TimeControl "60+1"]
[Variant "shogi"]
[VariantMen "P:fWf@4;B:B;R:R;S:FfW;G:WfF;+P:WfF;+B:BW;+R:RF;+S:WfF;K:K;+p:WfF;+b:BW;+r:RF;+s:WfF"]
[FEN "rbsgk/4p/5/P4/KGSBR[-] w 0 1"]
[SetUp "1"]

{--------------
r b s g k
. . . . p
. . . . .
P . . . .
K G S B R
white to play
--------------}
1. Bc2 Sc4 {+0.23/15 2.8} 2. Sd2 {-5.57/7 0.9} Ba4 {+0.00/14 2.3} 3. Bd1
{-0.27/6 1.1} Bxd1+ {+0.24/15 3} 4. a3 {-0.57/7 3} Rxa3 {+159.93/11 0.1} 5.
Kb2 {-129.85/2 0.1} B@d4 {+159.95/10 0.1} 6. Sc3 {-129.91/2} Bxc3
{+159.97/2 0.1} 7. Kxa3 {-129.97/2 0.1} P@a4 {+159.97/2 0.1} 8. Ka2
{-129.97/2}
{Xboard: Forfeit due to invalid move: S@a3 (_1_1 via ^0) res=25} 1-0

There are so many of them, not posting it. But there are also games that were finished properly.

[hgm]

The mini-Shogi package was made to be started from the Windows start menu, where the installer creates a menu group. The required configuration for mini-Shogi is in the file mini.ini. You can also start WinBoard in mini-Shogi mode by dragging that file on top of the winboard.exe icon. This file also contains an engine list (which is different for mini-Shogi, Judkins Shogi etc.). This is why you don't get the right engine list when you just start by clicking winboard.exe.

What your own command lines are missing (and what the mini.ini file has, so what you could repair by putting @mini on those engine lines) is a -pieceToCharTable. So it uses the standard Shogi pieceToCharTable. But that also contains Knight and Lance, in the order PNBRLS...G. But you have only holdings for 5. So PNBRL map into the holding, for S and G is no space, so these are demoted to Pawns on capture (like Crazyhouse promoted types are demoted to Pawns). This then produces illegal-move verdicts when the engine tries to drop S or G.

Btw, forget what I wrote earlier. Lima in that package seems to work fine. I was visiting someone who had downloaded it, and he showed me how the Golds demoted to Pawn. I would have sworn he downloaded it from my website while I was looking. But there must have been a mixup, with some old version he had around, or I cannot explain it.

[Ferdy]

The mini-Shogi package was made to be started from the Windows start menu, where the installer creates a menu group. The required configuration for mini-Shogi is in the file mini.ini. You can also start WinBoard in mini-Shogi mode by dragging that file on top of the winboard.exe icon. This file also contains an engine list (which is different for mini-Shogi, Judkins Shogi etc.). This is why you don't get the right engine list when you just start by clicking winboard.exe.

Thanks that solves my problem.